Saturday, July 7. 2007

I am back. I apologize to my readers for such a long absence. The Taylor clan is considering a big move to another state to be near family and the weighing the pros and cons has been time consuming. Thank-you to Monica for bringing me back.

Well, IVF has made a lot of children since Louise Brown in the 1970s. Figuratively, IVF has also had some of her own children. Embryo-destructive research and human cloning are two. We are now becoming aquainted with another, the chimera. What is a chimera? It is an organism that is a mix of two species. A chimeric embryo would be one that let us say part mouse and part human or part monkey and part human.

Now, it is important here to distingush between a chimeric embryo and a chimeric adult. Placing animal DNA into a human embryo is entirely different from growing a human liver in a pig for transplantation into a human patient. It is different because adding animal DNA to a human embryo at the embryo stage fundamentally changes the entire organism, not just one organ.

The British Parliament is considering allowing the creation of such chimeric embryos as long as they are destroyed after two weeks. From the Telegraph:

The wide-ranging draft Human Tissue and Embryo Bill, which aims to overhaul the laws on fertility treatment, will include sections on test tube babies, embryo research and abortion. Ministers say that the creation of animal-human embryos - created by injecting animal cells or DNA into human embryos or human cells into animal eggs - will be heavily regulated.

They insist that it will be against the law to implant “chimeras” - named after the mythical creature that was half man and half animal - into a woman’s womb.

If you accept the creation of a human chimeric embryo for research purposes, then seems reasonable that the law mandate that they be destroyed.

Now, here is where things get interesting and we Catholics may need to reevaluate what we think we know. In response to the possiblility of the creation and destruction of human chimeric embryos in the UK, Britian's Catholic Bishops have said that if they are created, chimeric embryos should be allowed to live.

How outrageous does that sound? Allowing a human-monkey to be implanted and born to a human or monkey mother? Have they lost their minds? No, I do not think they have.

The Bishops are very clear. Human chimeric embryos should not be made in the first place, but if they are they should be allowed to live:

The bishops, who believe that life begins at conception, said that they opposed the creation of any embryo solely for research, but they were also anxious to limit the destruction of such life once it had been brought into existence.

In their submission to the committee, they said: “At the very least, embryos with a preponderance of human genes should be assumed to be embryonic human beings, and should be treated accordingly.

“In particular, it should not be a crime to transfer them, or other human embryos, to the body of the woman providing the ovum, in cases where a human ovum has been used to create them.

“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so.”

I know what you are thinking...your gut is telling you this is wrong, all wrong. But, it is analogous to the reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning lesser of two evils scenario. We are told that therapeutic cloning, the creation and destruction of acloned human embryo for research is a lesser evil than creating a cloned human embryo that is implanted and becomes a cloned infant. But that is not true. All human cloning is evil, but reproductive cloning is the lesser of the two evils because it does not mandate that a human life be destroyed for research.

Will we ever see a human-monkey born to a human woman? Probably not. The image is grossly disturbing. But I think that is the point. If everyone could really understand and see the horrors of abortion with their own eyes do you think it would be legal? By bringing the possibility of the implantation of a chimeric embryo out from behind the laboratory doors the Catholic bishops have made us face the reality of what is actually going on: Scientists want to create all kinds of inter-species embryos in the name of research without any of the consequences, devaluing human life even more in the process.

The Bishops at first glance may seem like the crazy ones, but really they are a voice of sanity.

I agree with your position here - and, yes, "crazy" as the UK Bishops may come across, I don't know that they had any alternative but to lobby in favor of what is, ostensibly, human life.

Here's one area where it gets . . . especially strange: What does preponderance of human genes mean? Is it 51%? What if a chimera is created with 49% human genes? Do we lobby for the one, but not the other?

I think we have stumbled into, no -- we've been catapaulted into an area that we aren't yet prepared to deal with. I'm not sure the tactic of using "preponderance" of genes is the way to go. On the other hand, at what point is an embryo in part created by human genes . . . human? Does the idea of partly-human degrade our catholic anthropology?

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